Emma Freeman's travel blog about cruises

Tag Archives: cruise company

If you take a look at any cruise company’s website these days, you will see a LOT of cruises to Norway and the Baltic.

Why?

Because there is nowhere else that is safe to go.

Let’s start with the Mediterranean: Italy, fine. Turkey, fine. Syria,? Erm, no. Israel? No, because for some reason the cruise companies have had an almighty attack of cowardice, despite the fact that the Foreign Office have no problem with us going there. Egypt? Nope, not at the moment. Libya? Nope, no visits to Leptis Magna for us any time soon. Tunisia? Er… Malta, phew, yes! Let’s go to Malta!

So the only cruises available in any number at the moment are to the Western Med. Precious little, if anything at all for the Eastern Med.

Okay, so that’s the Med. What about the Caribbean? After all, US ships go virtually nowhere else? Well, it’s okay, but it’s not 100% cheery there either:

Of course, this isn’t every island and these incidents make the news because they are so unusual, but the overcautious nature of cruise companies, particularly those owned by Carnival, an American firm, who start with the assumption you are going to sue them and work backwards from there, means that avoidance may become the name of the game in very short order.

And then there is South America. Let’s go the Falkland Islands and see the penguins. Well, we were going to go to Argentina. And, of course,we’re not allowed to do both…

What about the Indian Ocean and the Pacific? In the past, we have been turned away from the Seychelles (pirates), Bangkok (bombs), Tokyo (too crowded!)… the list goes on.

So, the world is literally getting smaller, both for the populace as a whole, but particularly for cruise ship passengers, and I have a feeling it is only going to get smaller, as cruise companies avoid more and more places for fear of what might happen.

I don’t want to make you miserable, but you may just want to bear it in mind when you’re planning your next jaunt. There may well be at least one place, possibly more, you get diverted away from, possibly with very little notice or warning.

I would be interested if any of my readers have been anywhere that might be perceived as a bit dodgy recently, and how it was for you. Please let me know, and maybe together we can persuade the cruise companies that there is more to life than fjords.